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There comes a moment you have to face the consciousnesses of your actions. And the more you avoid them, the bigger they become. And Natalie wasn't the one to avoid the things she had done. So after her breakdown she gave a good look at herself in the mirror. A look that showed how much disappointed she was at herself. But after all she took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom. On her way to her bedroom she stopped in front of Amber's room to check if she had come back. But she was nowhere to be found and it was getting late. Natalie was going to deal with that after she kicked Isaac out of her house.
She cursed under her breath when she opened the door and found him asleep on her bed. It wasn't supposed to be him in that bed. She would have preferred to sleep alone for the rest of her life than let Isaac touch her again. So angry at him and herself she grabbed his clothes from the floor and tossed them at him as she said "get up" loudly.
"What?" Isaac half opened his eyes, not sure what was happening.
"Get up, get dressed and get out." Natalie said with small paused between the words. "Amber is not going to find you here."
"Okay, calm down." Isaac sat up and rubbed his face. "Can we at least talk about this?" He asked as he got dressed.
Natalie made a face. "Sure, it was a mistake and it's never going to happen again."
"Nat, please." He said and walked closer to her. His hand reached for her face but Natalie took a step back.
"No, get out." She repeated. "Amber is going to be home soon. She's already too late. So please leave and forget that this ever happened."
"I can't just forget-" He went to argue, but Natalie didn't want to listen to any of it.
"I don't care, get out." She pushed him towards the door.
"Look, this meant something to me."
"Get the hell out." She finally yelled and Isaac walked downstairs with no further talking. And once Natalie heard the front door closing, she looked outside of the window and down the street, only to see him getting in his car and driving away.
And just a moment later she started taking the sheets out of her bed, not bothering to wash them, but actually tossing them in the garbage.
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At the same time, just across the street Amber had just woken up, actually jolted awake once she realised that she was not home. "Crap." Amber cursed and looked around her. She was sleeping at Tom's couch, but none of her friends were there anymore. Amber remembered that the movie was really boring and she fell asleep half way through it. But she expected that one of her friends would have woken her up. But instead she had a blanket wrapped around her and her shoes were on the floor. She looked at her phone and saw that it was a little bit before 3 am and then she saw four missed calls from her mother. She wished she wouldn't be in trouble, mostly because it was an accident.
She quickly wore her shoes, not bothering to look for Tom. Just because they were at the same group of friends it didn't mean that she actually talked to him. No matter how much she tried. She was feeling embarrassed to even be in the same room as him, because he knew how she felt for him. And he hadn't done anything wrong, there was just a miscommunication between them and now Amber didn't even want to look at him.
But as she was about to get up Tom appeared. He looked like he had just woken up too. "Hey, you're up."
"Why did no one wake me up?" Amber asked and stayed still for a moment on the couch.
"I told them not to." Tom explained. "But then I also fell asleep and I guess it got a little too late. Sorry." He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "You know, I actually hoped that if it was just the two of us you'd actually talk to me."
"I talk to you." Amber huffed.
"Can I confess something?" He asked but Amber just looked at him with her eyes a little bit more wide than before. "It was a date. But I chickened out and I asked an old friend to tag along, because I..." Amber just stared at him with a poker face, not letting her true feelings be showed. "I like you, I liked you since the moment I met you. But you're also my best friend and I didn't want to screw that up, which I know that I did."
"I-I" Amber stuttered not sure what to say, but then her phone went off again and she knew she had to return home. "I gotta go. We will talk later." She left and ran home, freaked out because of what Tom had said and because she knew that she was in trouble.
She unlocked the door, not bothering to be quiet, she expected some yelling, and since Natalie hadn't been in a good mood since she broke up with Mark, she knew it could be just slightly worse than it should be. But she had no idea what actual mood her mother was at that night after everything that had happened.
"Do you know what time it is?" Natalie was pacing back and forth behind the door and once she saw her daughter entering with an apologetic look on her face she stay still with her arms crossed on her check.
"I know, I am so sorry. But the movie was so boring and I fell asleep on the couch and no one thought to wake me up and then I did at some point and only Tom was there and it was super awkward you know-"
"I don't care Amber." Natalie interrupted her. "You just keep doing whatever you want, whenever you want and you somehow think that it's okay. You're out all the time doing God knows what and I am supposed to roll with it because what? Because I want you to feel free?"
"What came into you?" Amber asked trying to keep her tone down. "I was just across the street. I didn't do anything."
"Yeah maybe not tonight. But that stops now! I can't keep losing the few hours I have to sleep because of you."
"Sorry I'm an inconvenient in your life." Amber yelled.
Natalie closed her eyes and took a breath to calm herself down. "I didn't say that."
"Okay whatever, you're obviously not okay about something, but I am not going to sit here so you can let your anger out on me." Amber went to walk away.
"Don't you dare walk away Amber."
"No, I am going to bed, when my mother's back let me know." And with that the teenager ran to her room and locked herself inside realising how easily a simple night can turn into... that.
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𝟘𝟞𝕩𝟙𝟛
A couple of mornings later, things were still the same. Amber was still mad at her mother. Natalie was avoiding all attempts Isaac did to talk to her. And then there was Mark who was trying to talk to Natalie, even if he was hurt that she called him a manwhore. But Natalie wouldn't even look at him. Because he had hurt her, but also because she felt guilty and disgusted. So she knew that the moment she even glanced at him she would tell him what she did.
One thing that had changed was the chief of surgery. Derek had talked to her about something being wrong with Webber, but she was too caught up in her own world to actually pay as much attention as Derek did. So few days later the whole stuff was gathered at the lobby waiting for Derek Shepherd to speak to them for the first time as chief.
"What the hell is he wearing?" Natalie muttered to Callie and Arizona who were standing next to her, and just beside them were Owen with Cristina.
"He looks good. Chiefly." Owen commented trying to be supportive.
"He looks like an undertaker." Natalie commented being her usual moody and sarcastic self.
"I promised him we'd clap." Arizona gave a warning glance at Natalie. "I'm looking at you Ms. cynical."
"Fine, I'll clap. I can clap right now if you want me to." Natalie joked but Arizona was not very amused. "Fine, I am sorry, I can stop talking." She apologised and soon the conversation quieted down once Derek appeared.
"I want to thank you all for being here." He started saying. "I know you're busy, so I'll try to make this quick. As you may have heard, I have been appointed the new interim chief of surgery. It's my personal goal to make this transition as smooth as possible. I know we've had a rocky few months. Here it comes. Mistakes have been made. I intend to right those wrongs, and, uh ... Bring this hospital back to its former glory." Derek paused as Chief Webber entered the room. "And, um ... What I meant ... Uh, by that is- what I'm trying to say is, I want to thank you for your support in advance. Uh, that's all. Okay, let's get back to work."
The attendings shared a look before they started clapping like Arizona had promised him they would. "And I can't make fun of him at all for this speech?" Natalie asked Arizona as they walked towards their assigned residents.
"No. What's wrong with you anyway?" The peds surgeon asked her.
"Where do I begin?" Natalie wondered but made a hand motion telling her to let it go. "Avery, I need you to round up my charts and bring them to room 22-14." She told the younger resident.
"Oh, Yang, usually comes in early to do that. I'm sure-"
"But Yang's not on my service today. You are." Natalie informed him and Jackson smiled please. Natalie wanted to be fair with everyone, that's why she couldn't keep working with Cristina all the time. Plus there was another cardio attending that Cristina could work with, in Natalie's mind at least. Because she didn't know about the whole drama with Teddy and Owen.
And as Natalie was heading towards the elevator she head someone calling her name. "Nat, Natalie!"
"You got to be bloody kidding me." Natalie said under her breath when she saw Isaac walking up to her. "Unless it has to do with Amber, we have nothing to say."
"Of course we have something to talk about. And you haven't been answering my phone calls or anything. That night-"
"That night was a moment of weakness, a mistake because I was hurt." Natalie talked over him. "Because I just keep letting men to hurt me." Her eyes fell behind Isaac's shoulder and onto Mark who was looking at the two of them with narrowed eyes.
Isaac caught Natalie's attention again as he continued speaking. Or at least tried to, because Natalie didn't want to listen to him. "I don't want to hurt you again, I just-"
"I am too tired to do this again Isaac."
"Would you let me finish a sentence?" He asked frustrated.
"Oh look who it is. My old pal Isaac." And then Liam came to her rescue.
"Liam." Isaac said annoyed.
"Are you bothering her? Is he bothering you?" Liam asked Natalie.
"He was just leaving. For good."
"Yeah, I was just leaving." Isaac agreed. "But we will talk, you owe me that." And with that Natalie's ex-husband walked away.
"I owe him that? I don't owe him anything." Natalie muttered annoyed and then looked at Liam. "I don't need a bodyguard."
"What are you yelling at me for?" Liam asked.
"I don't know, I just want to yell at someone and you're here!" Natalie yelled again but when people started looking at them she lowered her voice. "And it's better to yell at you than my daughter who is obviously mad at me for yelling at her the other night, because I was so mad at Mark and at Isaac and mostly at myself, because I slept with Isaac. And-"
"Whoa, hold back." Liam exclaimed. "You slept with Isaac? You, Natalie Turner, slept with the man you hate the most on this planet?"
"There are many male politicians that I hate more than I hate Isaac, but," Liam gave her a look, "okay not the point. Look, I can't talk about this, I have rounds." Natalie refused to talk about that to anyone, that was one of the reasons she kept avoiding Derek.
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"Sorry." Natalie mumbled when she fell onto someone on her way to meet her resident for the day. She looked up and noticed blue eyes looking back at her.
"Natalia..." He whispered and she closed her eyes at the sound of Mark's voice.
"Don't call me that. No one calls me that." She said quietly and once she opened her eyes she looked anywhere but him.
"You won't even look at me?"
"Do you need something?" She asked avoiding eye contact with him. Her heart ached at the sight of him. Because of what he'd done and what she had done.
"I never meant to do you wrong. I was just hurting. I lost my mind the moment I lost you. I would never..." He paused.
"I trusted you. And now I learnt my lesson."
"Dr. Turner..." Jackson walked up to the cardio surgeon, saving her from talking to Mark any further. "I pulled everything you asked for. It's all here in numerical order according to room number."
"Numerical order?" Natalie asked obviously not pleased with his work.
"Is that not how-"
"It's fine." Natalie sighed. "Yang always orders them according to priority. Most urgent to least urgent. But ... It's fine. It-it'll work. Follow me." Every slight inconvenient just kept ruining her mood more and more, but she tried to stop yelling at people because she had screwed up in her life.
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"Hey." Mark said as he entered Derek's office. Derek was there with Owen.
"Hey." Derek greeted him. "What do you think of the present I got from Hunt for becoming chief?"
"From Hunt, huh?" Mark was almost annoyed. "I was gonna get you one of those. The deluxe version. You know, the kind that keeps score? Not, uh, you know, the cheaper one." He rolled his eyes as he sat down at the chief's chair.
"That's my chair." Derek pointed out.
"I know. I like it. It makes me feel powerful." Mark made himself comfortable.
"That was quite a scene in the conference room earlier." Owen said talking about the yelling contest he had with Webber earlier the same day.
"Oh, you saw that." Derek cleared his throat embarrassed.
"Yeah, the whole hospital did." Mark threw the small basketball from the gift Owen had bought at him as he continued talking. "What happened there? How'd you dethrone the chief and why?" He asked being his usual gossip self.
"I can't talk about it." Derek shook his head.
"Not even to me?"
"It's not my story to tell. Looks like I'm facing a lawsuit. First day out-patient wakes up on the table." Derek informed them.
But Mark wanted to talk about what was bothering him. And Natalie not speaking to him really bothered him. "You know Natalie is not even looking at me. I can't have her hate me. Even if she dumped me."
"Which is why you went back to sleeping with my ex-wife?" Derek scoffed.
"You slept with his ex-wife?" Owen asked.
"Wait a sec. You're remarried. What do you care?"
"I care because Natalie is my best friend and I told you to not hurt her." Derek said making sure Mark knew that he was mad at him.
"I am your best friend!" Mark argued, but the conversation quite down when Natalie knocked on the door and everyone looked at the person they were talking a second ago.
"Hey, you wanted to see me?" She asked and then noticed everyone in the room. "Oh, you have company. I'll come back later, I guess."
"They–"
"Oh they're paging me." Natalie's pager went off 911. "I'll see you when you don't have any... visitors." She cleared her throat obviously talking about Mark and then left.
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"Let me in. What happened?" Natalie asked as she found Alex having his patient's chest open as he tried to find the source of the bleeding.
"He put out more than 2 liters of blood In the last five minutes, but I think I found the source, 'cause the bleeding started to calm down." Alex informed her.
"All right. Jump on. We're moving to the O.R." She ordered Alex and he jumped onto the bed. "Page Cristina Yang."
"Right away, doctor." A nurse replied to her and they quickly left for the O.R.
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"What's going on? How is he?" Arizona joined them in the O.R. Since the patient was a teenager and Arizona was in charge of his case.
"He's critical." Natalie informed her as she tried to fix him. "He has a ruptured aortic arch dissection. Hardly ever catch them, but Karev here may have worked a little miracle."
"Nice work, Karev." Arizona smiled at her resident.
"Damn it." Natalie cursed when she realised that she needed help and Cristina was nowhere to be found. "Where the hell is Cristina? I need a second set of hands."
"She's in the O.R. You want me to scrub in?" Jackson asked hopeful, but Natalie didn't reply, having difficulty trusting him in the O.R. when she was used to having Cristina. "Dr. Turner, I'm available. Believe me, I know I'm not Cristina Yang. Okay? You made that perfectly clear today. But if you give me a chance, I have very good hands. I can do this. Okay? I can help."
"Cannulate the femoral artery and vein." Natalie finally said. "And then we're gonna cool him down fast. We have 30 minutes to complete this repair rr this patient is toast."
But Natalie managed to save him.
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After her surgery was done successfully, Natalie found Derek sitting by the bridge, just looking down at everyone. "Hey, everything okay with the patient that woke up on the O.R. table?" She asked him. She had heard that his first day as chief wasn't the best one yet.
"I'm working on it." Derek replied obviously stressed. "Are you okay? You've been avoiding me." He pointed out.
"You're chief now, you have other stuff to worry about." Natalie shrugged it off.
"That's not the reason you're avoiding me."
Natalie sighed and decided to be partly honest. "Maybe I don't want to deal with my emotions right now. And whenever I talk to you I deal with them and I can't Derek, I can't. And Mark's your best friend and..."
"Natalie you're also my best friend. So talk to me."
"Bloody hell Derek." She cursed. "I can't talk about this. I can't talk about how disgusted I am with myself. I want to tear my own skin off. I want to burn my bed. I..." her voice faded out. "I slept with Isaac. I... I hate myself so much Derek." But that wasn't what Derek was expecting to hear.
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And the day had the perfect ending when Mark and Natalie ended up in the same elevator, just the two of them. Mark stayed in the back looking at his phone as Natalie stayed next to the door so she could ran away the moment they would be open. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but she couldn't and Mark noticed.
"Natalie." He tried, but she only shook her head at him. "Natalie. Please look at me."
"I can't." She said keeping her back on him.
Mark span her around with one move and she was trapped between him and the elevator. He softly touched her cheek and Natalie couldn't control her tears anymore. Mark's eyes softened once she started crying. "This isn't what I wanted to happen. I made a mistake, I know I did. But I didn't cheat on you. I didn't. I never would. You mean too much to me and when I lost you I lost the person you've helped me become. Can we please go back to the start? Or the middle? Just not the end. Please..."
Natalie closed her eyes tightly as the next words left her mouth. "I slept with Isaac."
"What?" Mark dropped his hands from her face.
"Yeah. I..." She opened her eyes again and actually looked at him this time. "Every part of me wants to blame you for that. Because of what you did. Because you really hurt me. And I never thought that you'd hurt me. I..." Natalie bit her lip when her voice trembled. "But that is something I can't blame you for. It's all me. So I guess we're even now."
"I pushed you back to him." Mark realised.
"Some things are just never meant to be, no matter how much we wish they were. And we were not meant to be." And with that she walked away, promising herself that she wouldn't let anyone else hurt her again.
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ᴀɴᴅ... ᴅʀᴀᴍᴀ Qᴜɪᴇᴛꜱ ᴅᴏᴡɴ. ᴀ ʙɪᴛ.
ʙᴜᴛ ɪᴛ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ʙᴀᴄᴋ. ɪᴛ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ᴄᴏᴍᴇꜱ ʙᴀᴄᴋ.
ɪꜱ ᴛʜɪꜱ ɪꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ᴍᴀᴛᴀʟɪᴇ?
ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴅᴏɪɴɢ ɪᴛ ᴀɢᴀɪɴ. ɪ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴍᴀɴʏ ɪᴅᴇᴀꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ɪ ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴡʀɪᴛᴇ ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴛʜɪɴɢ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏꜱ ꜰᴏᴄᴜꜱ ᴏɴ ᴏɴᴇ ꜱᴛᴏʀʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅᴏᴇꜱɴ'ᴛ ʜᴇʟᴘ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ʟᴏʟ